1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to automated control systems and, more particularly, to a system which controls a gasoline dispensing pump without the involvement of a human operator.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In today's society, gasoline is an essential commodity which has to be widely and readily available for use as energy source in most automobiles, other vehicles and various other machines employing internal combustion engines. Typically, a customer obtains gasoline at a "gasoline station", a facility which has gasoline stored in big tanks and has gasoline dispensing pumps which accurately meter the amount of gasoline leaving the tank and being obtained by a customer. After the gasoline dispensing procedure the customer pays the amount of gasoline dispensed.
In the prior art, the process of dispensing gasoline requires a human operator to both physically dispense the gasoline and collect the appropriate payment.
Furthermore, the prior art contains many instances of "self-service" gasoline stations. In these self-service stations, the customer acts as the human operator responsible for placing the hose nozzle into the container opening and for monitoring the amount of gasoline dispensed. A separate human operator, an employee at the gas station, collects the appropriate payment and then determines the amount of the gasoline to be dispensed. The self-service approach reduces the amount of employees at the gasoline station but some employees are required at all times when the gasoline station is open for business.
Moreover, this approach requires the amount of gasoline to be determined in advance and the customer has to estimate how much gasoline can be loaded into car tank which usually results either with a not fully loaded tank or a complicated procedure to obtain the overcharged amount.
Nevertheless, there are many situations in which it is desirable that no employee be required to be present when the gasoline station is open for business. For example, the gasoline station may have little business during the late night/early morning hours. The gasoline station operator may want to keep the station open for business during these hours, but the cost of paying the employees may prohibit this. Additionally, there may be additional costs during this period to assure employee's safety. Similarly, gasoline stations in remote areas may be very desirable but economically prohibitive.
The prior art discloses certain automated systems that may be adapted to provide the functions of determining the value of the gasoline dispensed and collecting the appropriate payment, but they were never applied for this purpose because their expenses exceeded the cost of employees. Thus, these devices are economically prohibitive and the few known devices, wherein certain amount of fuel can be purchased for certain amount of inserted cash, were never applied on a large scale because of too many limitations in consideration to safety of inserted cash, customer's convenience and unsuitable mechanical structure.
Furthermore, possibility for payment by credit card, existing nowadays at almost each gasoline station, requires presence of an employee because such payment procedure is not performed by automated means.
Therefore, it is to be concluded that no device disclosed in the prior art allows a gasoline station to be completely automated while giving the customer required flexibility in the mode of payment, either in currency, credit cards and/or IC cards and having a favorable economical aspect, which will become apparent from further description and drawings showing the present invention as for preferred embodiment.